The Raptors were competitive enough to contend for 8th seed had Bargnani stayed healthy.

This was not tanking. Tanking means intentionally losing games. I do have a problem with calling it tanking because tanking means a lack of integrity and I feel Colangelo's integrity is intact.

Like I eluded to in my previous post, your definition differs from mine.

As for contending for the 8th seed, I don't think any of us (including Colangelo) predicted Bargnani's level of play pre-injury. In other words, I highly doubt Colangelo had visions of the 8th seed before the season started (i.e. when he was assembling a roster consisting of Butler, Magloire, Forbes, Gray and Carter).

I disagree with you. There is no way you can know that. Countering that idea, there was no way for Colangelo to know DeRozan would struggle like he did. Teams that tank cut talent, the Raptors did no such thing.

Colangelo essentially warned the fan base that the season would be a long one. You don't need to read between the lines to understand that his expectations weren't very high.

And I don't think of tanking as being dishonest, or lacking integrity. Maintaining financial flexibility, allowing your young players to grow, and banking on another lotto pick (while your previous lotto picks readies himself) is what we all hoped Colangelo would do. The 2012 lotto pick is a very big part of Colangelo's plans for this season. When a GM doesn't make any moves to improve his non-playoff roster, that meets my definition of tanking.

Also, don't forget the three 10-day contracts Colangelo brought on. Yes, injuries played a huge part, but every team battled injuries....but not every team had their D-League call ups playing significant minutes (especially towards the end of the season).

I'm against calling it tanking as well. Not blowing all your cap space on mediocre veteran talent who don't get you much further in two or three years is far from tanking. I'm with Apollo that there was no way to know that DeRozan and even Ed Davis (and maybe a bit of Amir) wouldn't develop better and produce more than they did. Even though most people on here didn't expect us to win 23 games, in hindsight it's pretty clear that with a healthy Bargnani and more development by our young players (which they could and should have expected) we would have been more competitive (how much more is up for debate). That's not tanking in any definition.

About the ten day contracts: instead of signing those, Colangelo/Casey could have given the minutes to players like Carter, Butler and Forbes. Would that have been putting better talent on the court, I don't think so.

About the ten day contracts: instead of signing those, Colangelo/Casey could have given the minutes to players like Carter, Butler and Forbes. Would that have been putting better talent on the court, I don't think so.

If we weren't tanking, I'm sure Colangelo would've made a better effort (via trades) to improve the roster when injuries occurred, rather than relying on Alan Anderson.

You can call it whatever you like. But either way, Colangelo wasn't trying his best to win as many games as possible. This has been evident ever since the botched Calderon/Chandler/Diaw trade.

The problem I find is that some people seem to want to make it such a black & white argument: either you're competing for the NBA championship or you're tanking. The truth is, a majority of teams have no legitimate shot at the championship from year to year, so they must work to develop their young players and set themselves up for continuous improvement over the short and long term future. I'm more of a realist and understand this approach and don't believe it's tanking. I view it as organic growth, within the confines of the current CBA... however, over the course of the season, I was often accused of being a "tanking" advocate... and I was fine with that.

To me, "tanking" is when the team (management, coaching staff and players) collude to purposely and deliberately lose games. I don't think the Raptors did that and don't really think any team did that. Yes, some teams were deliberately bad, in an effort to get rid of old and overpriced players, while putting the future ahead of the present, but to me that's just sound franchise management.

The problem I find is that some people seem to want to make it such a black & white argument: either you're competing for the NBA championship or you're tanking. The truth is, a majority of teams have no legitimate shot at the championship from year to year, so they must work to develop their young players and set themselves up for continuous improvement over the short and long term future. I'm more of a realist and understand this approach and don't believe it's tanking. I view it as organic growth, within the confines of the current CBA... however, over the course of the season, I was often accused of being a "tanking" advocate... and I was fine with that.

To me, "tanking" is when the team (management, coaching staff and players) collude to purposely and deliberately lose games. I don't think the Raptors did that and don't really think any team did that. Yes, some teams were deliberately bad, in an effort to get rid of old and overpriced players, while putting the future ahead of the present, but to me that's just sound franchise management.

Exactly. Not siging mediocre or slightly above veterans with no upside left who only get you a little bit further in this year and not in the longterm isn't tanking, it's just not being stupid. (In fact, you can make a case that signing veterans who only help you a little in the short term and not in the longterm is longterm tanking - and for no reason whatsoever).

Yes, that appears to be the textbook definition of tanking, but it's also the definition that not a single member of the NBA circle would ever admit to doing, yet we know it happens every season. Therefore, "intent" can only be guestimated based on wins vs. losses, player transactions and whether or not a high pick is awarded.

If you look at what the Raptors did, didn't do, what they said they are and planning to do and the result while taking into consideration injuries to their best player I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that the Raptors tried to lose this season.

The takeaway from this particular story is that a binary choice--tanking or not tanking--is insufficient to describe the decision-making of NBA teams, all of whom are at dramatically different points in the success cycle. In every choice they make, teams must balance success in the immediate future with their long-term goals. This is true in every sport, of course, but especially so in one with a restrictive salary cap. Spending money and other resources on players who help win games now means paying the alternative cost of sacrificing the development of other, younger players who could be more effective in the long run.

I find something more rewarding about watching young players lose games than seeing veterans clearly heading nowhere. These rookies and prospects, no matter how promising they really are, represent some kind of hope for the future. As I've often borrowed from USC coach Kevin O'Neill and repeated in this space, NBA teams are either selling wins or they're selling hope. Taking that hope, in the form of lottery picks, from losing teams would be crushing to their ability to keep fans engaged.

From that standpoint, I find aggressive rebuilding to be a victimless crime and a crucial part of managing a team. Tanking is more sinister, in that it robs the rest of the league of the level playing field we expect and demand, especially during a playoff race. I just don't think it's that common in the NBA outside of seasons, like 2006-07, when the top of the draft is considered exceptionally strong.

Based on this, one could argue that every team in the lottery was aggressively rebuilding. Charlotte was giving Walker and Biyombo heavy minutes. Does anyone think they weren't tanking?

I don't. I think they were a bad team with very little talent and a lot of young, inexperienced players, some of which they are honestly hoping develop into significant parts of their core going forward. They have been a lottery team for a couple years and were quite obviously on a downward trajectory. They were definitely "sellers" that were looking beyond this year into the future. I think their players put forth a strong effort every game, certainly up to the point they were eliminated from the playoffs at least. They were just a bad team and it was no secret that they weren't playing with this season in mind. Looking at their roster from the past couple years, I see very little that they could have done, realistically speaking, to make them into a serious contender this season (certainly not without taking on some bad contracts via trade/signing). So, as Cho suggested to the team's brass in his interview, they took a step backward in order to take two step forwards. If I was a fan of Charlotte, I would be happy about this. It's much better than constantly taking one step forward and one step back from year to year, without doing anything that successfully improves the team for the current season or for seasons beyond. Again, I call it effective franchise management and a bad team losing games they had very little hope of winning.

You seem to want to blame the GM for "tanking", when he aggressively looks to the future instead of the present. I ask you this: how many GMs have been fired for allowing their "good" teams to languish in the middle of the pack, either consistently losing in the first round of the playoffs or barely missing the playoffs, year after year. GMs don't survive with mediocrity and fans quickly get sick of watching their teams in the middle of the pack, never getting better and never doing a true rebuild (just ask post-lockout Leaf fans!). That is what BC was doing during the Bosh years, because he was too afraid of upsetting Bosh and the fans, after doing such a great sales pitch that Bosh was a franchise player... if they had admitted Bosh was just another piece of the puzzle and continued to rebuild in the post-Carter era, this may be a very different looking, much better Raptor team today. Or would that be tanking too?

I don't blame the GM at all for tanking. I am 100% in favour of tanking. Everything you explained above, I agree with.

I just think some folks are in denial by not referring to this process as "tanking". Sacrificing the present in order to preserve the future, is tanking. Putting emphasis on future wins instead of current wins, is tanking. Relying on lottery picks to help build your team, is tanking. Signing minimum salary, 1-year deals in order to preserve cap flexibility, is tanking. Playing inexperienced players heavy minutes (who haven't necessarily earned it), is tanking.